Visitors in public locations such as parks, transportation stations, shopping centers, etc. are often burdened with material goods, e.g., luggage, retail items, trash, etc. Storage lockers are commonplace in many public places such as train stations and bus terminals. Although they offer a convenient way to temporarily store personal belongings, lockers are fixed in location and typically they are configured on a pay per use basis. Thus, each time the locker is accessed, full payment must be submitted. This limits their effectiveness as storage facilities where frequent access is required, i.e., shopping trip, etc. Although a hand cart, or other device may be employed as an alternative to storage, many of these devices are clumsy at best and do not effectively relieve the burden of transporting the material items.
Wheeled, robotic vehicles operating in a service environment such as a hospital, public transportation station, etc., are often assigned to perform predetermined transportation tasks (e.g., moving material from one location to another over a pre-defined route). However, many existing wheeled, robotic vehicles are not designed to operate in crowded, unstructured environments, nor do they freely interface with persons sharing space in these environments.
Wheeled, robotic vehicles operating in a service environment such as a hospital, public transportation station, etc., are often required to operate quickly in confined, dynamically changing spaces. In addition, these robotic vehicles must maneuver while carrying heavy payloads to reduce the burden of the people they are serving. In many applications, the mass distribution of the payload varies significantly as the payload changes. Carrying heavy payloads having different mass distributions with high acceleration to operate quickly in confined, dynamically changing spaces presents challenges. The combination of heavy payloads and high acceleration can lead to the generation of excessively high driving forces and the potential for vehicle instability or loss of traction. This can create a hazardous situation in a service environment as the mobile vehicle is often operating in close proximity to humans.
In summary, improvements to the design and control of wheeled, robotic vehicles are desired to perform material storage and transportation tasks in a crowded service environment.